Decay
April 5, 2008
Originally uploaded by skeletonkrewe
1526 magazine street, before demolition today.
History now,
as witnessed by survey team members, in the field of NewOrleansArchitecturalHistory,
a survey of historic New Orleans vernacular architecture,
NOAHs: New Orleans Historic Architectural Survey
in defense.
Magazine Street
April 4, 2008
Originally uploaded by skeletonkrewe
here’s the story from the Times-Picayune:
(reposted without permission, but totally relevant)
Neighbors, city tried to find family a home
Posted by Michelle Krupa / Times-Picayune April 03, 2008 10:47PM
Categories: Breaking News
HOUSE HAZARD
A two-story home on Magazine Street, deemed a danger, is being torn down, leaving a family with nowhere to go
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
Nine years after City Hall started slapping her family home with health and building code violations, six months after it was declared unlivable and six days after officials moved to demolish it, Lucille Salvaggio still struggled Thursday to grasp her plight.
“I don’t like to be rushed!” the 67-year-old woman wailed as she hung her frail body over the wrought iron fence in front of 1356 Magazine St., on the day before a wrecking crew is scheduled to raze it.
“The house is worn out and should be torn down. But why not give us time to clear out the things?” she cried. “I can’t even find my mama’s wedding pictures.”
As of late Thursday, it appeared no reprieve would be granted to Salvaggio and her two siblings, who for decades have shared a century-old, two-story house on a quiet block not far from the Pontchartrain Expressway. If the demolition proceeds this morning, the family has no idea where it will go.
Officials in Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration and a City Council member said they sympathize with the siblings, who all suffer from mental illness but have managed to hold down jobs and live on their own.
But the elected officials said the city no longer can subject neighbors to the dangers posed by the house, which has partly collapsed and is crammed with hoarded junk, posing a fire hazard. After years of trying, officials said, they have given up on persuading the Salvaggios to clean up the lot, sell it or move.
“We hurt for this family,” said Pat Robinson of the city’s Office of Planning and Development. “But we cannot continue to endanger other citizens in this city.”
While the case provides a clear example of local government’s challenge to balance the rights of neighborhoods and private property owners, it’s also the latest illustration of the frayed social safety net that has plagued New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. The government process to demolish the home has proceeded slowly, but ultimately it has moved with greater efficiency than any corresponding effort to relocate the family.
“The sad commentary is that it’s been allowed to happen — that in 2008, in America, in plain sight, people who are clearly in need of some help are allowed to fester,” said Jean-Paul Villere, who recently bought a double shotgun house across the street from the Salvaggios.
A dangerous site
From the sidewalk, the house looks like a death-trap. Wood slats splinter off the collapsed rear section like spilled matchsticks. A massive gallery teeters above the front porch. Through dusty front windows, narrow, twisting paths emerge amid stacks of boxes piled to the ceiling and filled with yellowed papers, rusted tools and other indiscernible junk.
John Tye, a legal aid attorney who has been working with the siblings since they were ordered to vacate in October, agreed that the building must go. But he criticized local leaders for taking the severe step before finding the residents permanent shelter.
“The house has serious problems, and no one is denying that,” he said. “Our view is that the city shouldn’t be demolishing a place if it’s going to make three people homeless.”
Officials admit they should never have let it get this bad.
More than 30 health and code violations have accumulated on the property since 1999, and the city’s Historic District Landmarks Commission has issued several renovation permits, only to find the work never gets done, Robinson said.
“The city has been frankly too permissive because they felt so sorry for these people,” said City Councilwoman Stacy Head, who represents the area.
Nowhere to go
In the past six months, Head said, her office and city Code Enforcement officials have bent over backward to find humane living conditions for the siblings. But their referrals to social service agencies and an offer of an apartment at the Guste public housing complex were refused.
“The Salvaggios are just not in a place emotionally or mentally to take advantage of the offers that have been made,” Head said. “At some point, you have to recognize that the lady next door has a right to live in a safe house.”
Neighbors said they live in fear that an errant cigarette butt or falling bottle rocket could ignite the house, which surely would collapse quickly and could ignite the whole block. The structure also appears poised to fall at any moment onto a passing car or pedestrian, they said.
But neighbors also said they don’t want the Salvaggios, a fixture on lower Magazine Street since the 1940s, to wind up homeless.
JoAnn Clark, who owns two adjacent properties, said the half-dozen social service agencies she has called on the siblings’ behalf have turned her down because the Salvaggios have a home and don’t appear to pose a threat to other people.
“How they fell through the cracks for so long, I don’t know,” Clark said.
Tye acknowledged the efforts of neighbors and city leaders to help the family, though he noted that “there’s a difference between calling a few places and actually following them until they have a place to go.”
After spending months helping the family apply for housing assistance, Tye hadn’t nailed anything down by Thursday. The process, he said, is slow and tedious, particularly given the dearth of affordable housing since the flood, though he remained hopeful.
Lucille Salvaggio, however, seemed less certain.
“Right now,” she said, “I don’t have anywhere to go tomorrow.”
1356 magazine – gern
April 4, 2008
Originally uploaded by anthonyturducken
this pic is from march 1 2008, about a month before the demoltion on april 4 2008. www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/wrecking_crews_demoli…
IMG_5425
April 4, 2008
Originally uploaded by New Orleans Lady
history is a witness to the past, and perhaps a look at the future…,
gone, today.
www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/wrecking_crews_demoli…
magazine street demolition
Originally uploaded by Karen Apricot New Orleans
ida took the picture of karen that i borrowed, artists of New Orleans
NewOrleansLady Rocks historic vernacular architecture sewing threads w/ photgraphy , throughout the city of New Orleans
April 3, 2008
2355439860_fab9af9b9cminnie
December 19, 2008
Originally uploaded by jeff and leyla
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neworleanslady/
Originally uploaded by jeff and leyla
sewing threads w/ photgraphy, throughout the city of New Orleans historic vernacular architectural resources and neighborhood as if it were your backyard, hope so cause it is, yea you right dawlin” !
new orleans lady photgraphy of this city does ROCK.
be grateful.
and principal among others of the Nohsurvey, the contmporary , re-New New orlean survey of architectural resources,…http://www.flickr.com/groups/noahs/
jlp/ New Orleans 